Sunday, 5 October 2008

Whilst reading through the Roguelike Developer FAQ, I stumbled across mention of a 3d roguelike Egoboo. Intrigued, I downloaded it, and was stunned by the beautiful art style, Zelda-like 3d graphics and my complete inability to play the game.

(I hate these kinds of bitchy reviews - particularly when I get one about Unangband, but I've discovered that public bitching seems to get a reaction, so bear with me).

I've included some of the art to the left. The in game graphics look intriguing, stylized and professional. But, frustratingly, my experience with starting to play has been completely negative.

It has a Windows installer, which works smoothly (but doesn't put a folder in the Start menu). My first experience of running the game on Vista, was an error message, telling me that Adobe couldn't load the game manual. Not a big problem - I'll get onto that later.

While lovely, the feedback from interacting with the menus needs to be improved. I'm unable to tell if I've clicked an option or not: it appears that there are several delays loading or generating new menus, but you'd never guess, because there is no change in either the button you click, or the mouse pointer, to tell you that it is processing.

Tip 1: Never build your own GUI. Use a tool kit that supports the game framework you are using.

Nonetheless, I battled through the menus, picked the Elf, and started the game.

I could see the UI, but the whole screen was frustratingly dark, and my elf, who I can barely see, is clearly capable of attacking, but fixed in place. It was only after I read the spoilers on the wiki, that I realised I was trapped in prison, and had to jump out of the hole I was in.

Tip 2: Don't ever start your game in the dark. Tip 3: Don't ever start your game with the character unable to move, unless it's during a cut scene.

Since the Elf was one of the 3 choices on the starting screen, I can only assume that one third of people who download Egoboo are going to stop playing in disgust. It didn't help that I ended up in the Audio menu option, which I could not exit, and had to kill the game process to exit.

Tip 4: Make sure that each of the menus in the game can be easily exited.

I restarted the game, configured it for windowed mode, picked the Adventurer, and started to play. Only to find that I couldn't move.

I had to at this point load the manual, to try to figure out the command set. But the command section in the manual only discribes how to remap commands. It doesn't tell me the basics, like how to move a character, how to attack, how to get my torch when I accidentally switch it off, like I did while pressing keys at random on the keyboard.

Tip 5: Have the commands listed at the start of the manual, with the keys required for each command.

I could get my character to vaguely wobble around the screen, but not move in satisfying way, and certainly not in a straight line for more than about five feet.

It was while reading the manual I realised something. The developers have never considered the fact that someone might play the game on a laptop using a mouse in windowed mode. (Whereas they've had the decency to provide joystick support for those people still living in the 80s).

As a result, mouse movement is sort of supported, but not in the classic sense of clicking somewhere to get the character to move in that direction. Instead, you roll the mouse in a particular direction to move them that way. This of course means I need an infinitely big window to move the character around the large and impressively drawn overworld map, or to keep picking my mouse up everytime I get near the edge of the window, as the mouse pointer ends up outside the window.

Tip 6: If you support mouse movement, it has to be point and click, with the screen automatically centering on the player as you move. That is how a mouse works.

As for the fact I couldn't move using the keyboard, it is because I don't have a numpad. So I'm immediately cut out from being able to interact using the keyboard. Which because of the mouse movement problems, is the only way I can play the game. (I realise I can remap the keyboard to numpad, but that'll cut out whatever commands are on those keys in the keyboard).

Tip 7: If you use the numpad for movement, ask if the user is running a laptop first, and provide a usable alternative.

I look forward to the above issues being addressed, and will provide a much more positive review in the future.

4 comments:

I love Egoboo, but I know exactly what you mean. It has such a quirky little feel to the game and I love riding the mouse for the adventurer. But, it does suffer from the built from the ground up feel of writing everything from scratch. If you look at the history, you can see how it developed and switched engines, but I always wished they would take a few rounds to polish the user interface (and give directions).

But, every time I play it, I keep wanting to make a cute Zelda-clone out it. :)

Heh. I actually tried egoboo once, and had similar experiences (I didn't get it), but only after playing the much more polished game "Soulfu" by the same developer. It's worth to try out if you find the demeanor of egoboo intriguing. I found soulfu addictive for a while, but maybe not a great game, and not necessarily a roguelike, by my understanding.

Since I'm new to the game myself (I only started playing it a couple weeks ago), I thought I'd share my thoughts about it and reply to some of the points you made in your review.

My apologies for making such a long comment. Feel free to trim down the quotes if you like.

It has a Windows installer, which works smoothly (but doesn't put a folder in the Start menu). My first experience of running the game on Vista, was an error message, telling me that Adobe couldn't load the game manual. Not a big problem - I'll get onto that later.

While lovely, the feedback from interacting with the menus needs to be improved. I'm unable to tell if I've clicked an option or not: it appears that there are several delays loading or generating new menus, but you'd never guess, because there is no change in either the button you click, or the mouse pointer, to tell you that it is processing.

All of this seems to be caused by a fundamental incompatibility with Vista, according to what I've read on the forums. I have not experienced any of it (in Mac OS X), and I don't think any of these problems would have lasted very long if they occurred on XP.

Tip 1: Never build your own GUI. Use a tool kit that supports the game framework you are using.

When a simple GUI will suffice, it is often easier to build one from scratch than to try to understand someone else's. That was probably the case here (it is indeed a simple GUI).

Nonetheless, I battled through the menus, picked the Elf, and started the game.

I could see the UI, but the whole screen was frustratingly dark, and my elf, who I can barely see, is clearly capable of attacking, but fixed in place. It was only after I read the spoilers on the wiki, that I realised I was trapped in prison, and had to jump out of the hole I was in.

I do agree that the Elf starter module does not start out in a particularly user-friendly way. Once you figure out that you have to jump, though, it gets much easier (don't forget to get the torch from that first Lumpkin).

Tip 2: Don't ever start your game in the dark.Tip 3: Don't ever start your game with the character unable to move, unless it's during a cut scene.

Agreed.

Since the Elf was one of the 3 choices on the starting screen, I can only assume that one third of people who download Egoboo are going to stop playing in disgust. It didn't help that I ended up in the Audio menu option, which I could not exit, and had to kill the game process to exit.

There should have been arrows on either side of those three module choices indicating that there are in fact several to choose from. I suppose it is possible that another Vista issue prevented them from appearing, but they are there. Not sure how you got into the "Audio menu option", though.

Tip 4: Make sure that each of the menus in the game can be easily exited.

Agreed. I have not encountered that problem here, though.

I restarted the game, configured it for windowed mode, picked the Adventurer, and started to play. Only to find that I couldn't move.

I had to at this point load the manual, to try to figure out the command set. But the command section in the manual only discribes how to remap commands. It doesn't tell me the basics, like how to move a character, how to attack, how to get my torch when I accidentally switch it off, like I did while pressing keys at random on the keyboard.

I seem to be one of the few people who always finds out what my keys are mapped to before starting to play a new game. If you open controls.txt, you can find that out, and change them if necessary (it looks like it was necessary in this case).

Tip 5: Have the commands listed at the start of the manual, with the keys required for each command.

I keep seeing clues on the forum to indicate that there is a substantial amount of documentation somewhere, but I have yet to find it. I think documentation appears to be one of the project's shortcomings.

I could get my character to vaguely wobble around the screen, but not move in satisfying way, and certainly not in a straight line for more than about five feet.

It was while reading the manual I realised something. The developers have never considered the fact that someone might play the game on a laptop using a mouse in windowed mode. (Whereas they've had the decency to provide joystick support for those people still living in the 80s).

As a result, mouse movement is sort of supported, but not in the classic sense of clicking somewhere to get the character to move in that direction. Instead, you roll the mouse in a particular direction to move them that way. This of course means I need an infinitely big window to move the character around the large and impressively drawn overworld map, or to keep picking my mouse up everytime I get near the edge of the window, as the mouse pointer ends up outside the window.

I tried to use the mouse for about five seconds and found it to be rather useless, so I switched to the keyboard. I've read that they have been considering simply dropping the mouse support, since it was written by the original developer, and nobody seems to be interested in rewriting it to be more useful.

Tip 6: If you support mouse movement, it has to be point and click, with the screen automatically centering on the player as you move. That is how a mouse works.

Point-and-click is fairly complex to implement in a 3D game. I wouldn't be surprised if none of the developers find it to be worth the effort to create such a system for Egoboo.

As for the fact I couldn't move using the keyboard, it is because I don't have a numpad. So I'm immediately cut out from being able to interact using the keyboard. Which because of the mouse movement problems, is the only way I can play the game. (I realise I can remap the keyboard to numpad, but that'll cut out whatever commands are on those keys in the keyboard).

For a game with as few controls as Egoboo has, defaulting to the numpad is simply unacceptable in my opinion. I intend to suggest a better default to the developers in the forum, before the next release.

I should have made it clear that the Elf module appears as one of the initial three options. I realise you can scroll to other modules, but someone will usually pick one of the first three you display.